Year two of fast ferry program will bring service to Kingston

The 350-seat catamaran M/V Finest prepares to be loaded on the Lisbon Trader in New York. The Finest will serve the Kingston-Seattle route when it starts up this year. It is undergoing work at a shipyard in Whidbey Island.(Photo: Courtesy Kitsap Transit)

KINGSTON — Most mornings, Doug Hayman leaves his Indianola home by 5:30. His first stop is the Port of Kingston parking lot, where he leaves his car in a rented parking space. After disembarking the 6:25 a.m. Washington State Ferry in Edmonds, Hayman hops into a waiting van, driven by a co-worker, that delivers him and four others to the University of Washington where he works.

In the afternoon, he’ll do it all again on the way home.

“It’s pretty epic,” Hayman said of his roughly four-hour commute.

Hayman and other North Kitsap commuters will have another option soon, with the approaching launch of Kitsap Transit’s passenger-only fast ferry from Kingston to downtown Seattle. Transit officials hope to launch the service this year.

The service is the next leg in the agency’s plan to build a fleet of high-speed passenger ferries to connect Kitsap County to the other side of the Puget Sound.

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Andres Solis masks the windows that line the walkway while working on the fast ferry dock at the Port of Kingston on Tuesday. The walkway will serve riders of the Kingston-Seattle fast ferry. Kitsap Transit is working to get service up and running in 2018.(Photo: Meegan M. Reid / Kitsap Sun)

Voters approved a sales-tax increase of three-tenths of a percent in November 2016 to fund the fast ferry program. Kitsap Transit’s business plan called for service to begin first from Bremerton in 2017, then Kingston in 2018 and Southworth in 2020.

Bremerton's service got off to a slow start in the first few months, with hundreds of cancellations due to mechanical issues with its experimental research vessel, the Rich Passage 1. Riders complained about the inconsistency, poor communications when the ferry did break down and a clunky and an unintuitive system for reserving seats on the vessel.

Kitsap Transit has learned a lot in the first year of Bremerton service — in some instances, the struggle of keeping a boat on the water — and officials say they feel confident that Kingston service will hit the ground running.

“There’s a segment of our community, bless their hearts, that are not fans of the passenger ferry program,” Kitsap Transit executive director John Clauson said. “We recognize that and understand it. Having said that, we've been tasked, the majority of the voters said go forth and do this, and we're going to do it the best we possibly can.”

Kingston service was supposed to start sometime in summer 2018, but delays in acquiring a vessel and fixing it up have pushed back the start to an undetermined date.

The boat that will be used to launch the route is the M/V Finest, a vessel from New York that is currently being refurbished on Whidbey Island. It's scheduled to leave the shipyard in late September.

The Finest will be “essentially a new boat,” Clauson said. Kingston will also have the benefit of a backup vessel, which the Bremerton route didn’t have when it started.

But Kingston residents still have concerns. Two different passenger-ferry programs have tried and failed to take root there, falling victim to low ridership and high costs. A quicker trip to Seattle may be a boon for commuters, but some residents are worried the connection could prompt a wave of development in Kingston — which already struggles with traffic congestion at peak commute hours.

Third time a charm?

Kingston residents aren’t strangers to the idea of a passenger-only ferry to Seattle.

In the mid-2000s, a group of private ferry operators including Argosy Cruises, Nichols Brothers Boat Builders, Clipper Navigation and Four Seasons Marine joined to back AquaExpress, a passenger-only ferry service between Kingston and Seattle.

AquaExpress was forced to shut down after 10 months, due to higher-than-expected fuel costs and uncertainty over whether Washington State Ferries would run its own passenger ferry.

The Port of Kingston tried a similar idea with its SoundRunner service, which ran intermittently between 2010 and 2012. SoundRunner suffered from low ridership and an inconsistent operating schedule, costing the port almost $1 million over two years.

Kitsap Transit hopes its venture will have different results. While preparing the business plan for the ferry program, the agency picked Kingston for a route because its ridership was projected to be the second-highest after Bremerton, Clauson said.

“Part of it is it draws not only from kind of the north Silverdale, all of North Kitsap, but it also draws from Jefferson County and to some extent from Clallam County,” Clauson said. “It was a large enough catch of an area with enough folks that were commuting to downtown Seattle that you could justify the operation.”

Unlike SoundRunner and AquaExpress, Kitsap Transit has the benefit of a dedicated funding stream, thanks to the sales tax increase approved by voters. North Kitsap County Commissioner Rob Gelder said having a subsidy for the fast ferry will be the biggest difference-maker in persuading riders to use the service.

“With the SoundRunner, the messaging that kept coming out was, ‘Well, we don't know how long we can sustain this,’” Gelder said. “You didn't know from one month to the next if you could rely on it, so therefore your customers didn't all come, because they're not going to change their routines and habits for something they can't count on.”

The Kingston route will also start service with a backup boat, the M/V Melissa Ann, which can take over when the Finest breaks down or goes out for maintenance. The Melissa Ann is a 172-passenger catamaran leased from Four Seasons Marine.

To attract riders to change their commuting habits, though, the service will have to prove it can be consistent. Kitsap Transit plans to start Kingston with a similar commuter-focused schedule that launched the Bremerton service, and it will expand sailings during the summer months.

“It’s like a new bus route, we're not going to have overwhelming ridership,” Clauson said. “We've got to prove ourselves, we've got to be able to show commuters that it's something they can depend on before they're going to give us a try.”

Getting on board

Will a fast ferry from Kingston attract riders?

Both the SoundRunner and AquaExpress struggled with low ridership. While the Finest can carry up to 350 passengers, Kitsap Transit will cap the capacity at 150 to start. Above that, additional crew members need to be hired to operate the vessel.

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Homeland Construction Co. Inc. owner Rick Lanning works on the fast ferry dock at the Port of Kingston on Tuesday. Service will start on the Kingston route with the M/V Melissa Ann, a leased catamaran that will eventually serve as the backup to the M/V Finest.(Photo: Meegan M. Reid / Kitsap Sun)

Commuters are likely the group most immediately impacted by a direct connection to Seattle.

The state ferry route to Edmonds currently provides the quickest way for many to commute to work in Seattle via the Sounder train or Interstate 5. Some riders find the roundabout commute to Edmonds preferable to driving and taking the ferry from Bainbridge Island, which sees heavy traffic in the afternoons.

Transit officials hope a consistent fast ferry will provide additional options for commuters who work in downtown Seattle and lighten the load from Bainbridge. Kitsap Transit has said the trip should take 35 to 40 minutes.

“The options are greater, I can use whatever makes the most sense, whether it's based on the departure time on our side of the pond, the departure time on the other side, or traffic on the roads getting back to their home,” Clauson said. “I think providing those options really helps us all.”

For Hayman, commuting to UW, he said it expands the options for him and his colleagues, who sometimes miss the van back to Edmonds because of late meetings.

“They’re doing Lyft or Uber and dropping pretty good chunks of money to get up to Edmonds and then cross over and get back to their car,” Hayman said.

Jenn Dickey, who commutes with Hayman, has an even longer trip. Several days a week, Dickey leaves Port Townsend early in the morning and rides the ferry to Edmonds. When late meetings force her to stay late and miss the vanpool, Dickey said she has to spend $40 or more on an Uber back to Edmonds.

With the fast ferry, Dickey could take the light rail downtown instead and hop the fast ferry back to Kingston and her car.

The backup goes a long way to giving commuters a measure of confidence, Gelder said. In the first few months of Bremerton service, riders were forced to catch the state ferry or find alternate routes to work when the Rich Passage 1 broke down.

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David Rinci looks out the window at the WSF dock as he caulks parts of the ceiling of the fast ferry dock walkway at the Port of Kingston on Tuesday, July 10, 2018.(Photo: Meegan M. Reid / Kitsap Sun)

“Having a reliable option to choose means everything in terms of being able to shift or change my previous pattern to something new,” Gelder said.

Other Kingston residents are eyeing the ferry as a more convenient link to recreational options in the city.

Svetlana Skelican moved to Kingston last summer with her family, in search of a community with a more direct connection to Seattle than driving I-5.

Skelican’s family travels to Seattle often, she said, because her kids love to visit Pike Place Market, Seattle Center and the waterfront. A walkable passenger ferry is a more attractive option than driving to Bainbridge, she said.

“What we're looking forward to is not having to worry about doing that piece of it,” Skelican said.

Impacts on Kingston

But some north-end residents are concerned about the ferry’s impact on the community. At certain times, traffic backups caused by vehicles waiting to get on the state ferry to Edmonds already clog downtown, and there are worries that Kingston lacks the infrastructure to deal with the growth a passenger ferry could bring.

“We're on a state highway, we have one way in and one way out,” said Lacey Anders, a Kingston native who owns the Borrowed Kitchen Bakery and Farmhouse Café on Highway 104.

“We're on a state highway, we have one way in and one way out.... I would say it's difficult as a business owner to attract people to stay in the community.”

Lacey Anders

Traffic is the main issue. During morning commute hours and weekends, the line of cars waiting to board the ferry snakes through downtown Kingston, past Lindvog Road and up Highway 104. During particularly bad snarls, the county calls on Washington State Patrol to enforce a tally system, where vehicles are stopped at Lindvog and let go at intervals.

Faced with traffic backups, potential customers outside of Kingston prefer to drive to Poulsbo to get the things they need, Anders said.

“I would say it's difficult as a business owner to attract people to stay in the community,” Anders said.

A quick connection to Seattle could bring an influx of customers to the Kingston area, which would be a benefit to local businesses. But downtown Kingston isn’t well-suited for pedestrians, Anders said. She specifically described the high number of motorists driving over the speed limit and running red lights.

“The problem is that there's nobody to just monitor that, we rely on (Washington) State Patrol, because it's technically a state highway, but we're all the way in the north end,” Anders said.

To avoid adding to the problem, Kitsap Transit plans to encourage riders to skip using cars altogether, according to Clauson. A big part of that will be pushing the use of park-and-rides at George’s Corner and the Bayside Community Church. The agency also plans to add an express bus route that runs between the North Viking transit center in Poulsbo and the Kingston Ferry Terminal.

Kitsap Transit plans on implementing an on-demand, Uber-style service to support the fast ferry launch. Riders will be able to call 24 hours in advance and request a ride, and a bus will pick them up and take them to the terminal.

“That will give people an opportunity to try out the ferry before they get into the car,” Clauson said.

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Lacey Anders places a basket of freshly baked bread in the counter window at her Borrowed Kitchen Bakery and Farmhouse Cafe in Kingston. Anders said she's looking forward to fast-ferry service bringing more customers to her business, but she's also wary of more traffic as a result of riders to the service.(Photo: Meegan M. Reid / Kitsap Sun)

If done right, however, locals like Anders think the ferry could be a boon to the "little city by the sea." It could be a place to visit for the day, catch a movie at a local theater, grab an ice cream or lunch before heading back to Seattle.

"I think the town of Kingston has an opportunity to capitalize on some of this growth instead of just being freaked out and stuck and feeling immobile," Anders said.

Recent residential developments — like a 140-townhome project proposed last year — have some worried about the impact the fast ferry might have on Kingston’s growth.

“I think this just encourages more and more people to move over and that's where you're going to see the impact on rents.”

Janice Hill

“There are folks that are really excited about it because they think, "Finally, it will make a difference,’” Gelder said. “And there are other folks that are full of angst because it means the start of some change; it means all of a sudden Kingston will be on a radar screen that it hasn't been on before, because it didn't have a direct connection to Seattle.”

Janice Hill, a Kingston resident and longtime commuter, said she would have loved the fast ferry when she worked in Seattle. But now, the prospect of higher home values and what it means for the more vulnerable in Kingston has her worried.

"I think this just encourages more and more people to move over and that's where you're going to see the impact on rents,” Hill said.

Hill wondered specifically about the homeless in Kingston, who she said tend to be not as visible because of the heavily wooded areas, and elderly residents on a fixed income. Kingston, like much of Kitsap County, has a lack of low-income housing, she said.

“I'm a transit person, I like mass transit. I like the idea of putting more people into a container that takes them to Seattle,” Hill said. “But unless we mitigate some of the effects then it's a big mistake as far as I'm concerned.”